Fitness

and Fun!

I strongly believe that exercise should be FUN!!!  So how do we have fun and get healthy at the same time?  It's about lifestyle, not just how many minutes or hours you log at the gym.  In order to establish a life-long goal of health, it's important to find physical activities that you actually enjoy, so it doesn't just feel like work or a chore that you have to complete.  Getting fit doesn't necessarily mean that you need to go to the gym, unless you really like going to the gym.  Whether you love the gym, always want to be outside, or are a TV/Movies and indoors kind of person, there are ways to get healthier and enjoy yourself while you do it.  A health coach can help you identify what you like and don't like for physical activities, how to translate that into a balanced exercise program, and how to ensure that you meet your goals for a healthy body and a sustainable, fun lifestyle.  

Exercise Design

To achieve overall physical health, a progression of the types and focus of physical activities is necessary. An overview of this progression is as follows:

• 1. Balance, Core, and Flexibility

  2. Strength and Endurance

  3. Power and Agility

While this is the general progression of exercise and fitness, these phases of activity overlap greatly, and depend on your current level of fitness and your overall health goals.  

Balance, Core, and Flexibility

Balance and flexibility are about creating balanced strength around each of your joints.  Most people have muscle imbalances that cause joint pain, potential for injury if you "push it" before you're ready, and effects on your health and well-being that you may not even be aware of.  

Many people spend hours in front of a computer, with your arms outstretched in front of you and your head at an unnatural angle.  This creates tightness and strength across the front of your shoulders and upper chest, while muscles across your upper back are weak and elongated.  If your head is looking slightly down at a computer screen, and you're swirling around a mouse with one arm all day, you probably have neck and upper back pain.  Assuming these issues haven't gotten too out of hand to the point of joint injury, then you can probably achieve some pain relief from balancing out the muscles around your joints - arms, shoulders, spine (neck and back).  If you do have serious pain and injury issues, seek medical care before starting any exercise or sports program.

It's critically important to your health to ensure you have support and balance around your joints before starting a strength or sports program.  If you get injured, then it will take longer to recover from that injury that it would have taken to create the muscle balance and flexibility you need in order to avoid the injuries in the first place.  

The core involves everything between your hips and your shoulders, all the way around.  It's all your front, back, and side muscles of the trunk of your body.  It is important for your spine and all the limbs coming off your trunk to have balance in your core, which means you need to build flexibility and muscle endurance in the front, back, and sides of your core.  

Balance and flexibility exercises should continue throughout your life, even after moving into the next phase of fitness, Strength and Endurance.  These types of exercises can be as easy as standing on one foot while you brush your teeth in the morning.  They can also be very complex and require a physical therapist to establish an exercise prescription for you that will reduce or eliminate severe imbalances. 

Check out the Coach4HealthyLife blog for more scenarios.  Read examples of aspects of everyday life that lead to muscle imbalances and why it's important to ensure balance and flexibility around your joints before pushing yourself too hard with sports and exercise that may cause injuries.

Strength and Endurance

This phase of exercise training does begin along with balance, core, and flexibility, because you are strengthening your muscles and beginning to build muscle and cardiovascular endurance in the initial phase.  But the goal of this phase is to continue to build greater levels of strength and endurance in order to meet your health and fun goals.  

The goal here is to increase your muscle fibers and your cardiovascular endurance by adding weight, repetition, and time to your exercise activities.  If you do the same exercise routine all the time, your strength and endurance will only stay at that level.  Continuous change is necessary in order to progress. 

There are many resources on the internet that provide exercise ideas for strengthening certain muscle groups.  But keep in mind that if you over-strengthen a particular muscle or muscle group, you could create another imbalance that could lead to joint and pain issues later.  So the idea is to make a plan that strengthens your muscles evenly around your joints.  For example, if you want to build your biceps muscles so you can show off your guns, make sure to also do triceps exercises. Otherwise you could end up with elbow and shoulder pain and joint issues.

Take a look at the Coach4HealthyLife blog for strength pairing exercise ideas.  

Power and Agility

Not everyone needs to get to the Power and Agility stage, it depends on your goals.  Do you want to play tennis in a league, or are you a competitive athlete?  Then this stage of exercise will help you improve performance while helping reduce your likelihood of injury.

Power is about explosiveness and heavy-hitting strength.  How hard can you hit that tennis ball or pickleball when you're serving to that smug guy in the league?  Do you want to do a slam-dunk in the office basketball league?  Or is power-lifting your thing?  These sports all involve the need for power.  It's a combination of strength and reaction time of your muscles - quick, strong movements.  

Agility is the ability of your muscles to react quickly and precisely, in a springy sort of way, with finesse. Think of running through the tires course.  You have to get your feet into the center of the tire and back out again quickly, without tripping on the edges of the tires and doing a face-plant.  This requires agility.

So power and agility require special types of exercises, and a good foundation of balance, flexibility, endurance, and strength (core and other muscles).  It's not advised to start power and agility exercises without this good foundation, otherwise these types of movements are the most likely to cause injuries.

See the Coach4HealthyLife blog for more discussion on Power and Agility.  

Where Should I Exercise?

Once again, unless you love going to the gym, it's not your only option.  There is plenty that you can do outdoors and in your own home with minimal or no equipment in order to establish and maintain a healthy body.  The first step is to figure out what you really like.  From there, an exercise plan can get established to keep you balanced, reduce your potential for injury, and most importantly, HAVE FUN!

Some people love to be out in nature.  This is me.  I like to do as much as possible outside.  There are ways to do most outdoor/nature activities and gain balance, flexibility, muscle and cardiovascular endurance, and strength.  Some popular outdoor sports that are great for any age are hiking, cycling, and kayaking or canoeing.  But you need to pay attention to proper form and muscle balance in order to avoid or reduce injuries.  A health coach can help you with this.  

Love the indoors?  Do you want to exercise while watching your favorite shows or movies, but not have to go to the gym?  There are sooooo many body weight exercises (exercises that just use your body) or exercises that require minimal equipment that you can do in your living room or bedroom, or your hotel room when you're on the go.  Again, it's critical to ensure that your exercise routine includes all the right exercises to establish and maintain muscle balance around your joints.  For example, if you're doing a standard plank on your living room floor, then you should also do planks on your sides and back.  

For more ideas on places and ways to exercise for all types of interests, see the Coach4HealthyLife blog at blog.Coach4HealthyLife.com.